First things first. I would like everyone to post their character sheets at the top of this thread for easy reference. Please don't post again in this thread until all the sheets are up. I will post the Masked Woman's sheet sixth after everyone else has theirs up. At that point the Chapter 2 forum will be open for business.

I will give bonus karma to anyone who posts their sheet in an especially nice format. Something legible, without every single skill listed.

New players joining us: Please take note of the last time your sheet was updated by the original player. You may have to read through the OOC and IC threads after that date to update your sheet with any additional skills or abilities that came to light.

You are under no obligation to continue RPing your character in the manner of the previous chapter. If you want to take your character in a different direction, personality-wise, that would be entirely plausible and even realistic, given the circumstances.

The Houserules are largely the same as what Ryo was using. If you are using them in a roll, please mention it as I do not have them memorized. I am adding a few (marked in red), which should not have a major impact.

PostingEveryday, ideally, even if it's just to check in with a couple quick lines about what you're doing in the background if the action isn't on you. That said, I know I will fall short of that ideal myself. I would like a more substantive post - doesn't have to be a huge essay - every two days or so to voice your opinion or to push the action forward. Obvious exceptions made for weekends and holidays. If you're going to be away for a few days, great. I probably will be too at some point. Just let us know, and ESPECIALLY let us know if you have to take an extended leave for whatever reason. Don't leave us hanging for weeks and months.

I have the most opportunities to post while at work. I have a regular 9 to 5 with ample access to the Internet. Seattle proper, GMT -8.

KarmaDue to the nature of PbP, karma will be awarded on a per-chapter basis. Karma awards will be based on participation and role playing. Unless Ryo already has karma awards in mind, I will send out Chapter I karma awards to those players who were with us.

There will be a separate karma award specifically for developing knowledge skills. Knowledge karma will generally be 1/2 the amount of your normal karma award. Advancing knowledge skills costs the same as in the core rule book.

Please run karma spending by me. Most of it will be fine but I'll want to keep track of it on your secret sheets too. Most of the time you will not need an IC reason to improve suddenly. The premise of the game gives us a good mechanic for most sudden improvement (i.e. you remember how to do something). It breaks down a bit for attribute advancement but oh well. It's a game.

Treat Metatype Attribute Minimum as 1 for the purpose of determining Karma costs. For example, if you are a troll with a Body of 5, which is the metatype minimum, improving to Body 6 only costs 10 karma, not 30.

MagicSpells that create a barrier, such as Physical Barrier or [Element] Wall, create a barrier with a Structure equal to the Force of the spell, and an Armor equal to Force+hits. This is to prevent hilariously flimsy barriers and make these spells actually useful. A magical Barrier is still a Barrier, and is subject to the Penetration Weapons rule; only barriers of sufficiently high Armor will actually stop bullets.

Instead of Alchemy being opposed by Force of the preparation, it is opposed by Force - Alchemist's Skill. Therefore, an Alchemist with an Alchemy skill of 6 casting at Force 6 or lower would roll Magic + Alchemy [Force] unopposed, but if he were to overcast to Force 12, he would be opposed by 6 dice. This makes it easier to create preparations with decent Potency.

A preparation taking a single box of Physical damage will not make it lose its magic. This would render Disjoining obsolete, as you could disarm preparations without risking Drain just by smacking them. Instead, a sufficiently damaged preparation is immediately triggered.

Damage to a Preparation does not release the magic unless it is completely destroyed/ruined/scraped off the object. Alchemists shouldn't be at a constant risk of self destructing simply from putting their preparations in the same pocket as their car keys.

Flesh Form merges from Inhabitation have half their Force added to the Physical Attributes of the host.

When possessing a living vessel, the enhancement to Physical Attributes is limited by Augmented Maximum. This limitation does not apply to Inhabitation spirits.

Fake magical items made through Artificing stand up to Assensing in addition to Perception tests, using the same thresholds.

Quicksilver Cameras do not have a fixed limit, only increasing the threshold of the Assensing by 2, or by 3 for a copy.

VehiclesIn Handling Environments, Catch Up/Break Away is a threshold test based on the complexity of the obstacles as normal. In Speed Environments, Catch Up/Break Away is instead an opposed Vehicle Test, pitting the speed of both drivers against each other.

When crashing, a vehicle is treated as if it rammed itself, resisting with Body+Armor as normal. Half of the unresisted damage is applied to the passengers of the vehicle, resisted with Body+Armor -6 AP. If a passenger is not properly secured (wearing a safety belt/harness), then they must resist the full initial damage of the crash instead, and may be hurled from the vehicle (gamemaster discretion). This may result in further damage from impact with the terrain or other vehicles.

Drones that have their Condition track filled can still be repaired. The cost is 1% of the base cost per box of damage sustained.

So long as a Vehicle is moving, the driver defends against attacks with Reaction + Intuition. They can choose to use Full Defense, adding their Willpower for the remainder of the Combat Turn, and losing 10 initiative. They can also choose to use Evasive Driving, the equivalent of Gymnastics Dodge, and add their Pilot skill to the defense test. Doing this adds the Handling of the vehicle as a limit to the test.

A vehicle that is not moving does not get to defend against attacks.

SensorsThe signature table is nonsense. The signature of a given target is dependent on the type of sensor attempting to perceive it; Cameras are subject to vision penalties, Thermographic sensors lock on with heat, MAD sensors lock onto ferrous metal, Radio Signal Sensors lock on to Matrix Icons, etc. etc.

The Sensor Housings table should instead read Sensor Array Housings table. Single Sensors do not have their Ratings limited by the size of the Housing.

Area of Effect attacksGrenades and area spells can either be aimed at an area (Simple (3) test) or aimed at a specific target (attack roll vs. defense roll.) If you aim at the area, all the targets in the blast radius can (and probably will) use the Run for Your Life interrupt action to escape the blast. If you aim at a specific target, they cannot use this interrupt action; they get their defense roll instead.

The effectiveness of flash-bang grenades and Indirect Area spells (like Fireball) will decrease with range as per a normal grenade (-1 DV per meter). This is to avoid "can't miss" attacks due to the area of effect being larger than the possible distance of the scatter.

TechnomancersAll technomancers have an innate ability to establish a Direct Connection to any device they touch. Technomancers can also form PANs.

Resonance abilities do not render properly in the Matrix and can often go undetected. If something does not qualify as an Attack or Sleaze action, the victim would have to make a Matrix Perception check to notice they were the target of something. This includes Resonance Spike. A persona forced to perform an action with Puppeteer is obviously aware it performed an action, but a Device that is Puppeteer'd does not notify its owner.

MovementMovement rates will generally be HALF of what's listed in the core rule book on p. 162. Agility = meters per turn walkingAgility * 2 = meters per turn runningHits on a sprinting test still add 1m/hit for Dwarves and Trolls and 2m/hit for other metatypes. This is a little slow at the lower Agility ratings but I've done the math and like these values much better.

Rulebooks in Play

All 5th edition rulebooks, including PDF only books, should be consider valid. 4th edition content not yet available for 5th can also be consider valid on a case by case basis. For example, the amnesia quality itself is a negative quality from 4th edition that you all have.

RG6: DAMAGE FOR NO DEFENSEIf an attack decreases a targetís Defense Test pool below 0 dice, additional penalties are added to the DV of the attack at a rate of 1 DV per two lost dice. This makes Full Auto or Burst Fire attacks against unaware or restrained foes truly deadly.

Please keep in mind, this sheet may be sorely lacking, as I still havent learned everything there is to know about Sammo here. Also, I feel like I had some points left over to spend on knowledges still, but its been so long, i dont remember how many.

Name: ?Alias: Crumpled/DocRace: HumanSex: MalePhysical Description/Personality/background:Somebody forgot to wear their safety belt. A man lies in a crumpled heap on the ceiling of the overturned van, face down in the snow. He's dressed appropriately for the weather, and its clear one of his arms is cybernetic, with a touch screen of an implanted cyberdeck visible on his forearm.

He's SINless, or very careful, as he has no publicly accessible info on him at all.

Name: Ileana AnghelescuAlias: The Masked WomanRace: HumanSex: FemaleNationality: Saeder-Kruppian?Ancestry: RomanianLifestyle: Middle, safehouse in AspenMoney: •682Karma Spent: 28 karma + 13 knowledge karmaCurrent Karma: 0 karma / 1 knowledge karmaPhysical Description:1.75m, 55kg. Her long, dark hair pools on her shoulders, and frames her ballistic mask that has a Wiccan pentagram carved ornately on its face. She wears a lined coat over a black jumpsuit, boots, and gloves. She's completely covered, with no skin or other physical features visible.Personality/background Helpful. As a follower of Hecate, Katsina must render aid to those who truly ask for it. She also tends to render aid to those that don't ask for it. This is balanced by her need for blood to survive, although she tends to downplay this as much as possible. She seems to regret what she is, rather than flaunting it like some vampires do.

Thank you, everyone, for getting your sheets/placeholders up in a timely manner. Here is what's next:

1) Ryo has told me what's in the crate. I asked a couple follow-up questions. Once I know more, I'll start a Chapter II for the IC. We'll leave Poindexter's question as the cliffhanger completing Chapter 1 and then start Chapter 2 with the unveiling of the crate.

2) In the meantime, please scan through the Chapter 1 threads and update/prettify your sheets.

Ryo has delivered the character sheets, including 10 pages of background for the characters. This is in addition to the three pages of plot, backstory, and clarifications he already sent. Judging from the timestamps on the PMs this took 3+ hours to pull together, so let's give Ryo all due credit for 1) getting the game off the ground and 2) passing along the materials to keep it going. There's a ton of content here, all of it indicating a tremendous amount of thought and planning. My primary goal at this point is to not frag it up.

Crate is in the back of the Rover, yes. There is no "backseat" since the rear seating was removed to accommodate the horned bear that the hunters had captured. There are seats for the driver and a passenger but everyone else is in the back on the bloodstain that used to be the bear's head.

In my head, Ohanzee is doing this from inside the Rover - mostly because it's cold outside and the team needs to get moving - but that was never explicitly stated.

Chino is driving (or at least in the driver's seat). Katsina and Ohanzee are in the back. Ace, Sam, and Crumpled are unaccounted for. The passenger's seat is unclaimed but you have to look at a bloody dashboard that represents what's left of APB.